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Ahhh, a gravel bike then 😉
Nah, for some reason gravel needs 2".
Won't even take UCI CX tyres comfortably.
Nah, for some reason gravel needs 2″.
So you've got a good reason to spend 9k on a 1998 hardtail but redesigned* with a through axle and a decent rigid fork instead of just wearing spd sandals and using a tourer?
Do you mean genuinely or for a sport
Genuinely, mostly about the various new BB and axle standards
So you’ve got a good reason to spend 9k on a 1998 hardtail but redesigned* with a through axle and a decent rigid fork instead of just wearing spd sandals and using a tourer?
Already got a 1996 hardtail and a 1998 one (in pieces), and a 2002 one with a rigid fork. And a tourer.
No SPD sandals though, not anymore.
You don’t have to spend 10 to 20k to buy a competition level push bike, sure if you’re chasing 10ths or 100ths that 30k track bike is possibly going to find them for you but it’s proper halo level stuff at that point.
Yeh this! Look at Josh Tarling. He was on a bog standard giant TCR road bike, ripping the UK national scene apart as a junior - and got signed directly to Ineos. I can't see at £9,000 pinarello having made any difference to his performance.
I also agree with all the people saying lightweight is what actually FEELS great. (Road) bikes have gotten SO bloated. Sub 7kg was the measure of a £2500 bike ~7-10 years ago. The past 5 years, you could barely buy a sub 7kg bike for ANY price (under 10 grand). Absolutely absurd! All these choppers buying 'fast bikes' when they do one wobbly ride a week haha.
Bikes are just silly expensive now. Sat there looking at the queue in Morzine and thinking how many €£s worth of bikes were lined up.
Same goes for the roadies you pass.... Lots of mullah for two wheels!
People seem to forget the ‘engine’ is the rider ! No £15k superbike is going to make you faster than someone fitter on a £1,500 bike ! By all means get a nice bike, I’ve got some too, it’s their money. But splurging an arm and a leg on the latest part, to make the bike 500g less, won’t improve your speed up a hill, that’s down to you, and where the hard work starts. Shed a few kg of blubber and you’ll fly.
Always enjoy hanging on to roadie on a climb. Was riding a col the other day and the roadie couple were surprised to see me sitting on their wheel...
Always enjoy hanging on to roadie on a climb. Was riding a col the other day and the roadie couple were surprised to see me sitting on their wheel…
Where's the enjoyment? You are clearly fitter than them if you are on a less suited bike but just as fast (unless they are not trying as much as you of course).
I am faster than many on the road and go past them like they are not moving when going uphill but likewise get passed by other road riders who are faster than me. Only really matters if you are in a race and you are interested in winning.
the cost of high-end things for any sport is based purely on the disposable income of those who take part.
Absolutely this… the manufacturers and marketers will milk us for as much as they can. No idea what their actual margins are but I would guess pretty high.
The thing is there is still some degree of market forces going on that push prices/profit down, particularly with a luxury good like a performance bike
So I'd guess with road cycling something weird happeneds were unecessary amounts of money are poored into marketing and marginal technological developments, rather than the prices just coming down (given road bikes' relative simplicity)
It's an interesting question, because I can look at my (then) £1000 Trek Superfly hardtail and compare it to my (then) £1750 aluminium road bike, and it is quite blatantly better value from a function/materials/R&D perspective i.e. suspension forks instead of rigid carbon, bigger/chunkier/heavily treaded tyres instead of skinny smooth tyres, hydraulic disc brakes instead of rim brakes* etc. Any yet, marketing has obviously done it's job as I still look at the road bike and think it's great value!
BUUUUUUT is that because the road bike feels so fast (because it's light?) and smooth (because expensive smooth supply tyres and compliant frame) and quiet (because high end, well adjusted gears and high end, well adjusted rim brakes that never rub or squeal)? That's worth a lot to me, even if it didn't actually cost the manufacturers anything to 'build in' to the bike.
For what it's worth, good road bikes don't need to be expensive, I've replaced the (£1750 6 years ago) aluminium road bike with a somewhat boutique carbon Italian equivalent, total build cost (Ultegra, rim, 1550g shallow Fulcrum wheels, 7.6kg with pedals cages and computer mount) of £2700 but it's lighter, stiffer, prettier and more aero (and yes, handbuilt carbon from Italy instead of triple butted aluminium from Taiwan, if that matters). I doubt it gives anything away to a £6k disc braked and e-geared super bike other than I guess the advantages of deeper carbon wheels and the very rider specific advantages (if applicable) of discs and e-gears.
*actually I still think hydraulic disc brakes on road bikes are shockingly poor value given how cheap and how function e.g. a set of Deores on an MTB can be.
So I’d guess with road cycling something weird happeneds were unecessary amounts of money are poured into marketing and marginal technological developments, rather than the prices just coming down (given road bikes’ relative simplicity)
^ Sort of what he said actually
There's some road great bikes on eBay around £500 mark if you are happy with rim brakes. My old used Isaac Kelvin was £400 a few years ago, if I spent some money on a lighter set of wheels or some deeper rims it would be a real weapon. As it is I can go for a group ride with folks on Aethos', or Propels or fancy Cervelo's and not be held back.
Road bikes have got crazy in price inflation - I blame the dentists who've sold their Porsches. I'll accept that the tech now takes more R&D since with full internal cabling, intergrated Bar/Stem systems, discs (Urgh), beefed up dropouts to handle braking forces and then trying to engineer that all down to be both Aero and only 500g heavier than what it replaced is going to cost. It still irks me however.
I ride a 2016 Supersix Hi-Mod with Red Etap. Total build cost = c. £3.4k, Weight 6.7kg. Current Supersix HM with Red Axs = £11.5k, weight 7.5kg! Yes it's x watts per 40km more efficient at 40kph but then I only achieve close to 40kph average speed in a TT.
But if you buy a mountain bike you have to budget for a vw van, fitting it out as a camper, pies, fags for when you stop after every blue run, new wheels, new hope brakes, new avid brakes, three or four droppers, an Enfield himalaya, bigger clothes because of the pies, a trail dog, a pizza oven. It’s an endless cycle of expense 😉
This made my morning, chapeau!
Think it's pretty obvious why road bikes are so expensive now, it's the market reacting to the MAMIL effect. Over the past 5 years road cycling has exploded in popularity and the demographic is largely middle aged men with lots of cash. I'm just glad I bought my Canyon Endurace SLX five years ago for 4.5k as now the same model is 7.5k. I doubt I'll be buying a similar bike in future when the time comes. 🙁
It's an interesting (and ultimately impossible) comparison as each Niche has slightly different measures of function and therefore value, you could well argue that even within MTBs VFM varies quite a bit, a ~£1k HT with a 100mm fork and Deore/NX drivetrain/brakes etc constitutes far better "VFM" than a £5k+ Dandyhorse With XT bits or whatever on the simple basis that after a years worth of relatively similar use both will probably need the same parts replacing/servicing but the more expensive bike will cost substantially more to keep in use throughout it's life, you're arguably just buying the privilege of buying more expensive spares, Discuss...
One thing perhaps in Road bikes favour is that the main metrics of performance are relatively simple weight, aerodynamics, wheel quality those tend to be the big three (IMO) and most punters will give a little bit on one or the other, there's actually some pretty good VFM road bikes about if you aren't totally wed to the idea of having a Carbon frame or can maybe tolerate not having the most totally aero machine...
Suspension on MTBs adds a whole dimension of potential problems (IMO) in terms of buying the right bike/parts to meet your actual needs and all the other relatively complex technologies (droppers and a plethora of tyre options) there are definitely gift horse MTBs with all the boxes ticked that are not necessarily good bikes right out of the box...
By comparison you can quite easily have a nice Aluminium framed Road bike, rolling about on decent, but not fancy wheels with Tiagra drive/brakes and only really be giving away maybe ~1kg and a smidge more drag compared to your mate who spent 3x as much and still doesn't cover ground or climb much faster...
Gravel bikes are exempt from the above because the niche covers such a spectrum of variable machines I'm not sure where you start in terms of "VFM" there...
Generally I like Cheap functional bikes over pricey bling so long as I can do the riding I actually want to do I'm content not to have the latest or poshest bikes.
I'm struggling with this also!
I have a 10 year old Dura Ace equipped rim brake bike with a 50mm wheel upgrade. It comes in at 7.1kg and frankly nothing major wrong with it. In fact it's brilliant.
I've squeezed 28s in there with about 3mm to spare so not ideal especially heading towards winder, or on chip and seals roads where I often ride.
I want to run wider internal rims, would love DI2 (rode it at the press launch in 2009ish and wanted the self trimming front mech ever since!) and discs for all weather performance with carbon rims and, frankly, fancy something more modern looking after 10 years on the existing bike.
I've gone to purchase 5-6 times now and just can't do it - I'd have to spend 2.5 times what my last bike cost, and add half a kilo minimum. It feels like a real indulgence. I'm fortunate in some ways though, I do currently have the money, and it'd be more fun that paying the gas bill.
I spent equivalent money on a big enduro bike 2 years ago and it seems far more bike for the money with all the tech in shocks, linkages and over twice as much actual material! 😉
I’ve squeezed 28s in there with about 3mm to spare so not ideal especially heading towards winder, or on chip and seals roads where I often ride.
Have you tried latest generation Shimano callipers? They have more space, but not sure how they'll play with 10yr old levers, not sure when Shimano tweaked the lever pull
Unfortunately the clearance is as much the frame as the brake. The tyre is very close to the seat tube and chainstays, as well as the fork crown. Running the widest rims I could has helped - the tyre is less tall and the calliper is a bit wider.
I also want slightly easier gearing - 36 x 30 is a bit too high for long days. 12 speed compact gives me 34 with the same ratios as I have up to 30, with a 12th speed as a 34/34 bail out. So tyre clearance and comfort, braking, gearing (ratios and DI2) and aero all add up to a whole lot of relatively smaller benefits (but don't reduce the actual spend!).
I’ve gone to purchase 5-6 times now and just can’t do it – I’d have to spend 2.5 times what my last bike cost, and add half a kilo minimum. It feels like a real indulgence. I’m fortunate in some ways though, I do currently have the money, and it’d be more fun that paying the gas bill.
Buy a lightly used secondhand disc roadie.
FWIW my experience of going from a Scott CR1 just a touch heavier than your bike to an 8.2kg Boardman SLR with discs was that it was faster up, down and along.
Yeh this! Look at Josh Tarling. He was on a bog standard giant TCR road bike, ripping the UK national scene apart as a junior – and got signed directly to Ineos. I can’t see at £9,000 pinarello having made any difference to his performance.
it’s never the bike , it’s the skill or genetics, pros need the better bike as they are competing where a win or lose is very close.
You can ride the the pros bike but you can’t ride it like a pro 🙂
I’m lucky to ride on a section that gets used on La Vuelta,even on a nice bike I’d be crying in the corner if I compared my strava to theirs 🙂
Gravel bikes are exempt from the above because the niche covers such a spectrum of variable machines I’m not sure where you start in terms of “VFM” there…
I suppose the vfm could be in not having to have a road bike and a mtb.
(I think you also need the right ride scenario for it, I have gravel tracks and loads of potholed roads as well as nicely surfaced roads from my front door so find it perfect for my needs as I’ll mix it up to go places.)
I went from a lot of bikes to a few and tbh spend most time mincing around on the gravel bike with 42c tyres.
I ride roads used in the Grand Depart and TdY so lots of big names at the top of the leaderboard.
My small Strava claim is that I'm fitting above Lars Boom on a downhill segment! I held KOM on it for a good while before him and some fast mates came through. I kept that pace up for 3 minutes, they kept it up for 3 weeks though!
My small Strava claim is that I’m fitting above Lars Boom on a downhill segment
I have been doing some very selective filtering on Strava this week to get myself and Wout van Aert on the same page, I'm "only" 13 seconds behind him on one of my local climbs 😂
I suppose the vfm could be in not having to have a road bike and a mtb.
(I think you also need the right ride scenario for it, I have gravel tracks and loads of potholed roads as well as nicely surfaced roads from my front door so find it perfect for my needs as I’ll mix it up to go places.)
I went from a lot of bikes to a few and tbh spend most time mincing around on the gravel bike with 42c tyres.
Well yeah, my version of a "gravel bike" is more of a 'roadie' shaped gravel bike but with 40mm, slightly knobbly tyres and a lower gearing range, while for lots of people now "Gravel bike" is something that is more like an MTB, with pretty wide flared drops, a dropper post, a full on 11-50t cassette and 2.1"+ tyres. That's not quite my bag but is very much a "Gravel bike" still.
You'd never really be able to compare them on a VFM basis because while they wear the same marketing labels, the customers that buy either bike are looking for very different things.
Your version of gravel bike is same as mine. I could just buy many road bikes these days and use it as a gravel bike as road bikes tend to come with lower gears these days and can typically accommodate a 32c tyre which is big enough for fast gravel (I spent years riding gravel on 25c with no issues)
So I’d guess with road cycling something weird happeneds were unecessary amounts of money are poored into marketing and marginal technological developments, rather than the prices just coming down (given road bikes’ relative simplicity)
quite. if the max anyone spent on a road bike was £2k, there's no way electronic gearing would have been invented. when cables do the job perfectly good enough
For what it’s worth, good road bikes don’t need to be expensive, I’ve replaced the (£1750 6 years ago) aluminium road bike with a somewhat boutique carbon Italian equivalent, total build cost (Ultegra, rim, 1550g shallow Fulcrum wheels, 7.6kg with pedals cages and computer mount) of £2700 but it’s lighter, stiffer, prettier and more aero (and yes, handbuilt carbon from Italy instead of triple butted aluminium from Taiwan, if that matters). I doubt it gives anything away to a £6k disc braked and e-geared super bike other than I guess the advantages of deeper carbon wheels and the very rider specific advantages (if applicable) of discs and e-gears.
they don't have to cost anything like £2700 either. a few weeks ago I spent £350 on a carbon TT bike that had been ridden 5 times since new, 12 years ago. It was bought by someone to race on, he did a couple of training rides, one race, then it sat in his garage for over a decade.
Its not quite as light as your bike at 9kg (its a quintanaroo kilo), but it is massively fast (~3mph faster than my old bike) due to the position it gets you in. With a smattering of unused dura ace/ultrega, it works brilliantly.
they don’t have to cost anything like £2700 either
Yeah, I left myself open to that one 😂
£2700 for me was '40th birthday present to myself' money and it's a made up number anyway as I had most of the kit already, I arrived at £2700 with current RRPs of my 6 year old kit.
I’ve gone to purchase 5-6 times now and just can’t do it – I’d have to spend 2.5 times what my last bike cost, and add half a kilo minimum.
My last complete road bike was round and about £4k. At the time (mid 90's) it would still not have been that out of place in the tour with it's full DA9, made to measure steel, carbon fork, tubular tyres on campag rims. Was just under 8 kilos. Got a bit lighter when i put some carbon rims on it (debadged corimas).
My latest new bike was, errr, almost exactly 3k (at todays exchange rates, was nearer 4 when i bought it) and has
Di2, Disc and clearance for 33mm tyres…
It's also full carbon, 11 speed, tubeless and weighs just under 8 kilos. (I've had a few bikes in the interim, mostly frames, built up with existing parts etc)
It's probably a better bike in every way than my "pro compatible" mid 90's race bike. I still prefer riding the steel bike though.
Think it’s pretty obvious why road bikes are so expensive now, it’s the market reacting to the MAMIL effect.
Brexit has screwed the exchange rate to the Euro, Dollar and Yen.
Covid screwed the supply chains.
Inflation has screwed everything all over again.
I don't doubt there's a bit of "mamil effect" in there as well but prices are too silly for that to be the main factor.
Where’s the enjoyment? You are clearly fitter than them if you are on a less suited bike but just as fast (unless they are not trying as much as you of course).
Dude..... They had shaved legs! He had Shimano ice-tech discs. He was sweating harder than a wet mermaid and breathing out his arse.
Yes, so you were clearly fitter than them. You get enjoyment out of being faster on a bike than another random person riding on the same road, takes all sorts I suppose.
Think it’s pretty obvious why road bikes are so expensive now, it’s the market reacting to the MAMIL effect.
I actually agree. I mean, the super expensive bikes are ever so slightly better, but none of us need this. They exist because people with that kind of money want to buy them - just like loads of things, including expensive MTBs. But there's no need to be cynical about it. People with money buy expensive stuff, that's the way it has always been. If you were a bike company and your competitor's expensive bike was flying off the shelves, wouldn't you try and make an even more expensive one to take some of that money?
In terms of engineering value for money - it's quite difficult to say. Yes, you get a lot of gubbins in a top end MTB with Ohlins whatnot but it's all just machined or injection moulded. On the other hand, a fancy road bike and wheels is probably laid up, baked and finished by hand in small numbers. The R&D costs are probably similar, but the MTB will spend ages on a dyno rather than in a wind tunnel.
I have a £2k road bike with upgraded wheels. I think if I won $1.5bn on a lottery I might upgrade to Di2, and I would get some carbon bars but I'm but sure I'd bother with anything else. My recent MTB purchase was £1600 on sale, and it weighs a ton (actually just shy of my sister-in-law's eBike!) and I given that it's alloy I might chop it in for a full carbon version of the same bike with associated high end kit. Which, incidentally, would cost a lot more than my Di2 upgraded road bike.
Dude….. They had shaved legs! He had Shimano ice-tech discs. He was sweating harder than a wet mermaid and breathing out his arse.
He may also have been 150km into a ride vs you completing your first lap of a blue run
Always makes be laugh when people on MTB's try and race you when you're timetrialling. Yeah good job, you held the wheel for 30seconds before blowing up, now hold it for an hour.
Also, I'll accept that the market has an impact on what we're willing to pay for stuff. But having had Etap on the roadbike and Di2 on the gravel bike, for everything non-MTB, I'm never going back to cables so I suppose I'm part for the problem.
Dude….. They had shaved legs! He had Shimano ice-tech discs. He was sweating harder than a wet mermaid and breathing out his arse.
Still not sure what your point is, I regularly take my gravel bike on roadie group rides where I know I'm faster than the average. Equally I get absolutely pasted by a few of the guys who'll turn up to gravel rides on full MTB's for the same reason.
MAMIL effect was 10 years ago.
Last five years people have been leaving road for gravel.
MAMIL effect was 10 years ago.
Last five years people have been leaving road for gravel.
Yeah MTBing is prone to a similar crowd.
My point of reference for them is Dave who I went to Uni' with, a lovely bloke, but the whole time we were students he had zero interest in any sort of sport apart from (watching) football.
A couple of years after graduating, and now having some disposable income, plus colleages who were into it he was suddenly, overnight "Mr Snowboarding": knew all about it, bought all the kit went on a few trips made sure you saw the various photos of him looking rad in the Pow up a mountain somewhere.
A couple of years after that, and probably because there's a bit of obvious crossoveer he was "Mr MTB" again overnight he had a posh new Stumpy, was eyeing up a bigger travel Enduro bike, bought all the accessories and acquired a Strava account so he could share more photo's of him living the lifestyle...
Not sure what he's into this week, but I know he got hitched and had kids a few years back, which has no doubt damped down the rate of fad adoption, but I doubt it's stopped.
The point is MTB's attract as many "new golfers" as road bikes or any other active sport, this weeks MAMIL was probably last weeks MTBer. All the people jumping on the road bike hype waggon a decade ago have probably added a shiny MTB (and/or Gravel bike) to their collection too by now, Betcha.
There's as many people with money and no sense into Road bikes as there are MTBs.
Think it’s pretty obvious why road bikes are so expensive now, it’s the market reacting to the MAMIL effect.
100% it's easier to feel fast on a road bike. MTB takes more effort as there is a level of bike handling skills.
Actually I had a bit more of a think about this, I reckon half the Reason for price hikes in road bikes is the increased complexity of the frames/forks over the last couple of years. A decade ago it was relatively straightforward, manufacturers only had QR dropouts and a single hole at either end for a rim caliper to provide, a decade before that they were pretty similar.
Now it's all gone bolt through and flat mount the complexity of the tooling and construction has ramped up significantly, couple that with the drivetrain manufacturers asking more for kit that is also growing in complexity, I can see some justification beyond the lazy old 'dentists and stockbrokers' trope...
Still not sure the prices are that different when looking at a component level. Maybe compare two bike in same sort of range from Canyon.
Not easy to directly compare but the Canyon Ultimate CF SL 7(Ultra Di2, DT 1600 wheels) seems about same level as Canyon Exceed CF SLX (GX Eagle AXS, DT 1501 wheels)
Ultimate is £3,850 and Exceed is £4,299. (MTB has sus fork cost while road bike has 2x and associated brifter cost). The carbon is slightly better on MTB too but the prices are not really that different are they?
''Always enjoy hanging on to roadie on a climb. Was riding a col the other day and the roadie couple were surprised to see me sitting on their wheel…''
It's never a good look to bully pensioners
Popularity controls the second hand market, and also how much stuff gets reduced. 2nd hand road bikes were dirt cheap back in the day (says the former Master Piu owner) as the market was so small . That's changed, which is probably a good thing, though not everyone will be a riding god .
One thing I wonder, with the top end parts, is how big the production runs are compared to the lower end stuff, and how that affects overall cost (I know it's significant). You then add those higher costs in, and tooling up to make 1000 pieces is pricey compared to 100,000 compared to 10,000,000 and they multiply up down the line to the rich consumers here.